1793 – The Music part 1 - Inspired to the keyboard

 

Hob. 15#	Genre	Key	Lan. No.	Instrument(s)	Notes
18	Keyboard Trio	A	32	Keyboard, Violin & Cello	Dedicated to Princess Maria Anna Hohenfeld-Esterházy
19	Keyboard Trio	g	33
20	Keyboard Trio	Bb	34
17:6	Andante & Variations	f		Solo Keyboard	Composed for Antonia von Ployer

A Broadwood nameplate: Note the address, right across the street from Haydn's #18

It has been quite a while since we have seen Haydn writing any music for the keyboard. There doesn't seem to be any special reason, such as being tired of it, or being 'written out' in the 'lack of inspiration' sense. The reality of having to write six symphonies, a sinfonia concertante, an opera, a madrigal, marches and dances, arrangements of lira organizzate music and so much more, simply didn't leave any time for the pianoforte since he completed the wonderful sonata (Hob 16:49) for Marianne Genzinger in 1790.

Despite all the orchestral music, Haydn most certainly didn't forget the pianoforte though. Among other things, he had two of the finest living keyboardists as companions during his first London trip. Muzio Clementi, although not much discussed heretofore, was not only there, but in fact he was standing in for Haydn just now, in 1793, while Haydn was prevented from traveling. And the other, who we have already seen much of, was Jan Ladislav Dussek, who played at nearly all of the 1791-92 concerts.

	Muzio Clementi, one of the leading pianists, composers, teachers, publishers and instrument makers resident in London at the time of Haydn's visits.
Jan Ladislav Dussek, not only a continent-wide favorite on the keyboard, but the son of a friend of Haydn. He played at nearly every one of the 1791-92 concerts and was hugely popular in London.

Although the London 'papers often featured Haydn 'presiding at the harpsichord', there is little real doubt that what he was actually playing the continuo on, along with the splendid little solo in Symphony 98, was a pianoforte. What a revelation it must have been for him, the first time he sat down in Broadwood's shop and thundered out a few chords! The beautiful Viennese fortepianos which he had lovingly adopted within the last fifteen years may have had a lot going for them in the way of an action which virtually played itself, small keys with a shallow 'dip' (the amount you have to press down) which required little movement, and a dark, velvety sound which was beyond compare. But in London the requirement to play in a larger hall and with a large orchestra, something virtually nonexistent in Vienna, had already been present for nearly thirty years, so the building of a powerhouse music-making machine had been un fait accompli for quite some time before Haydn's visit. And most importantly, London was richly populated with players who knew how to make the most of it.

Looking back from our comfortable, 21^st century perspective, we like to believe we know all there is to know about what led us to where we are now, although it is very fair to say that those who know the most are the ones who best realize how untrue that is! The famous Andante and Variations in f are a case in point. The more I have read about this work, the less sure I am about what the real story is, or even whether there is a 'real story'. Writing in the liner notes of his first 'Haydn - Complete Works for Piano', John McCabe seems to have gotten the idea, I believe from Landon early times, that Haydn had composed this work as a mourning piece for Marianne Genzinger. What sort of evidence is available to us to buttress this idea?

We saw Haydn's final extant letter to Marianne last November:

[To MARIA ANNA VON GENZINGER, VIENNA. German]

Gracious Lady !
Apart from wishing you Good Morning, this is to ask you to give the bearer of this letter the final big Aria in F minor from my opera, because I must have it copied for my Princess. I will bring it back to you myself in 2 days at the latest. Today I take the liberty of inviting myself for lunch, when I shall have the opportunity of kissing Your Grace's hands in return. Meanwhile I am, as always,

Y[our] G[race]'s most obedient servant,

Joseph Haydn.

[Vienna:] From my home, 13^th November 1792.

[Address:] Madame Noble de Gennzinger, a Son Logis

Orpheus mourning Euridyce
Emily Balivet (contemporary)

What is this 'final big aria'? Marianne was holding on to the manuscripts which Haydn had sent back from London. He needed a friend with no other interest to hold the fort in Vienna. So when he needed that part of the opera (which he wasn't supposed to have!) he sent a messenger over to her house to pick it up for him. Marianne died two months later, and we never hear any more from Haydn about her after this letter. So what does this have to do with the Andante & Variations? Here is the lyric to the 'final big aria in f minor':

Perduto un' altra volta…

I have lost the heart of my heart, my soul again.
Ah, what will become of me?
All I can see are terrifying spectres all around.
The realms of the blessed have vanished forever,
and in one brief moment have been replaced by the abodes of eternal weeping.
I have the realms of darkness in my heart.

The theme for this heartfelt cry of pain, in modified version, is also the theme for the famous double variations in f minor in the current work. Amazing coincidence? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I am no subscriber to coincidence as a ready explanation, and being unable to prove cause and effect doesn't render cause and effect invalid, either. In any case, when Haydn left Vienna for London in December, 1790, he had two people who, if he had been asked, he might readily call his best friends. They were considerably younger than he, Marianne born in 1754 and Mozart in 1756. And yet now, in early 1793, both were dead.

Which leads us to an alternate theory of the backstory of the Andante and Variations in f. This was a commissioned work. Pretty much everything you read these days will say it was commissioned by or for an amateur pianist and friend and student of Mozart named Barbara Ployer. She was no average ivory tickler: Mozart wrote at least two, possibly three of his concertos for her, K 449, 453, and possibly 488. And since Mozart and Haydn were so close during the period when she was taking lessons, and playing duets, such as K 375a/448, in public and in salons, it is inevitable that Haydn knew Babette Ployer. As a revision of his earlier idea, Landon suggests that since the work was for Ployer, whom Haydn associated with Mozart, then perhaps the great cry of mourning was in fact for his recently deceased 'best and greatest friend'. This is a reasonable surmise, but what about this? The dedicatory copy (the one Haydn actually gave to Ployer) says this at the top:

Un piccolo divertimento, Scritto e composto per la Stimatissima Signora de Ployer da me, giuseppe Haydn '793

A little divertimento, written and composed for the Highly Esteemed Mrs. Ployer by me, Joseph Haydn, 1793

Now, I don't know about you, but one thing I have always been sure about Haydn is that he knows a married woman from an unmarried one. Not that he let that knowledge govern his actions, I must add, but still, he, like everyone else in Vienna, knew that Barbara Ployer was still a Signorina at the time. When she got married, she immediately moved with her new husband to Croatia, where she died in 1811. Maybe modern musicologists, who always seem to approach this work from an English point of view, just didn't want to go to Vienna and sort things out which they think are already sorted? Who can say? Fortunately though, we actually have a musicologist in Vienna who eats up opportunities to sort things out. Since he specializes in Mozart, the fact that Michael Lorenz quietly dispelled this Haydn myth in 2006, en passant, in an essay about Mozart's students¹, is an unlooked-for boon. However, and to keep an already-too-long story short, Barbara moved to Vienna, probably very shortly after her mother's death in 1779 and moved in with her uncle Gottfried von Ployer. Gottfried's wife, Antonia, was a Spaun, one of the most musical families in Vienna, and closely related to one of Schubert's best friends, Joseph von Spaun. Antonia kept Barbara from being the only brilliant pianist in the family, and it is ultimately to her that Haydn dedicated this work. Note to the reader: it has been 10 years since Lorenz wrote about this, but since then dozens of realizations of this work have been released and I have yet to see it mentioned even once. In about fifty years, long after I'm dead and gone, the first writer of liner notes will timidly step forward and attribute the commissioning of this work to, "possibly Antonia von Ployer" and the world will shake. Mark my words! But with Babette Ployer out of the picture, the theory of Haydn writing the work as a shared reminiscence with her about Mozart is pretty well shot down too. Might it be, as I have long contended, that 18^th century composers simply didn't write their own feelings into a work? Despite all the talk about this piece, I have yet to see any convincing evidence to alter my personal beliefs!

The piece itself is one of Haydn's finest for any instrument. He called it, on the original manuscript, a sonata. Perhaps he intended it to be the first movement of a sonata, or possibly he was intent on following the more obscure path of one-movement sonatas, but once he had finished constructing it, there was probably no turning away from the 'one large movement' scenario. What could he have possibly done for the rest of it? From manuscripts, we can follow the creation of this work, which shows parts abandoned and parts added on, such as the brilliant, giant (83 bars) coda. The alternating variations which lead into the coda are in the style which Haydn was most associated with (although he didn't invent it), two contrasting themes, one varied in f minor, the second in F major. It is a structure which Haydn had used before, and which he will use again for that matter, but never better than here.

As we will see next year, Haydn had made some great friends among the London Piano School set, and although he didn't allow this work to be published there yet, nor in Vienna until 1799 for that matter, he did let certain good friends play it at salons and such, and had some copies made as gifts. They must have been much appreciated, the work itself has become one of the most enduring parts of his legacy!

I am no less fond of the three keyboard trios which are floating around in this time period. The set of three, in A, g & Bb, are yet another flashing sign to music historians that all the mysteries of Haydn are far from solved. Even though these works first show up in November, 1794 when they are submitted for publication in London, it seems very unlikely that they were also written in that time period. It seems insupportable to me that three works from Haydn's prime, dedicated to his Princess, should still be given a composition date range of 1793-94!

Anton's beautiful second wife, Maria
Anna (Gräfin Hohenfeld) Esterházy

After waiting for so many years to become the Prince of all he surveyed, Anton Esterházy didn't last very long on the throne. His reign extended from ~1 October 1790, when we saw him firing nearly all the musicians and actors, until 22 January 1794 when he passed. It is fair to say, though, he was good to Haydn and a good ruler too, who tried to repair some of the damage made to the family fortune by his 'Magnificent' father. So it is no surprise that Haydn would carry on a long tradition and dedicate a set of works to his second wife, Maria Anna (née Hohenfeld) Esterházy.

 As we have seen since the mid 1780's, the keyboard trio form was growing apace in Vienna. But this was only the tip of the iceberg, since the rest of Europe, and England in particular, had been having Une affaire de cœur with the form for a long time. It was the ultimate form of house music, and domestic music making was big and growing due to many factors, including growth of wealth, advancement of piano technology and pretension of the classes to the pleasures of their 'betters'. We saw that in 1792, a Haydn trio was performed onstage by Hummel, Salomon and Menel, Hob. 15:14 in Ab, and it was a palpable hit. I have yet to find a record of an earlier performance of a trio in public, so this may have been one of the earliest. However, given Haydn's nose for what might please the public, it is no stretch to say he decided to toss a few trios into the music case; if they didn't get on stage, they would sell like hotcakes at the dealer's shop.

And well these three little gems might sell! All three combine Haydn's latest structural ideas, something we will see more of in the next two or three years. I have long been discussing the string quartets as Haydn's 'workshop pieces', and they will remain so right until the end of his career. But for the next while, the fifteen trios he will compose will be a major supplement to his toolbox.

Next time we will look at the final (certain) completed works of 1793, the string quartets of Opp. 71/74. Which is not to say that there isn't more, logic tells us that the symphonies, Hob. 99-101, must have had a good start since they were all completed by March at the latest. But we will content ourselves to discuss this when the premieres happen. All in all, some of the finest public music Haydn wrote is coming out of this year of solitude and relaxation in Vienna. OK, maybe not that much relaxation.

Thanks for reading!

1 - Michael Lorenz  - New and old documents concerning Mozart’s pupils Barbara Ployer and Josepha Auernhammer  2006 - Cambridge University Press